


On the Pier in Harmonica Town

by skarlatha



Category: Harvest Moon: Animal Parade
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-04
Updated: 2012-05-04
Packaged: 2017-11-04 19:24:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/skarlatha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chase hasn't given Maya any encouragement in this weird little crush she has on him, but that hasn't stopped her from acting like a jealous weirdo and pushing him into the ocean. Toby seems to always be there to rescue him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Pier in Harmonica Town

One  
  
Chase had five thoughts upon hitting the water. They were as follows:

  1. Why the hell would you do this in Winter? The water was friggin’ icy. 
  2. He would be lucky to get out of this without losing at least one barrette.
  3. If Maya didn’t want him to be honest about how foul that herb fish was (“decent” his ass) then she shouldn’t have asked him for his opinion.
  4. You know who pushed men off of piers when they were pissy? Children. That’s who. 
  5. It would have been nice if Toby wasn’t there to witness the whole debacle.

He muttered some very non-child-friendly words while he paddled over to one of the posts of the pier where he could climb up. Toby came over and reached a hand down to help him up. Chase considered not taking it, but then decided that someone needed to be a mature adult in this situation, and batting the guy’s hand away when he really could use a bit of help was childish. Like Maya. Bitch-ass whore. Bitch-ass whore who  can’t cook . He let Toby pull him up onto the pier.  
  
Toby smiled at him. “I’ve got a blanket in the fishery. Come on. You’ll catch cold.”  
  
Chase almost refused, but a gust of wind hit him and he shivered visibly. “F-fine,” he said, his teeth starting to chatter. “Thanks, Toby.”  
  
“Oh, it’s no problem.” Toby took him to the Fishery. Chase looked up toward the Ocarina Inn and saw Maya storming away, her skirts flipping in such a way that he knew she’d been waiting for him to look up before she flounced. He made a face and followed Toby into the Fishery.  
  
  
Two  
  
Once again, Chase had five thoughts when the top of his head went underwater.

  1. If you’re going to be pissy at someone you have a weird, totally unrequited crush on for flirting with the new farmer, you should at least do it in a timely manner, not weeks after the flirtation ended and the farmer in question had started courting the town fortune teller.
  2. Also, If you’re going to try and win over someone who hasn’t shown any interest in you, you should maybe give him some high-quality eggs so he can cook something halfway edible for himself, not the grossest blackberry pie Castanet has ever seen. Or, you know, orange juice. That’s hard to screw up. But if somebody was going to screw up orange juice, it would be stupid-ass Maya.
  3. And MAYBE--just maybe--you shouldn’t make a habit of throwing people off piers when you’re in a snit. He wondered if he was the only one she did this to. He hoped he wasn’t, because that made all this a little less ridiculous. 
  4. What was up with this ocean? It was icy even in the Spring.
  5. At least the only other witness this time was Toby. So there wasn’t a new person to have to know about his shame.

Toby helped him out of the water again and threw a blanket over Chase’s shoulders. Chase smiled at him gratefully and burrowed into the blanket.   
  
“I got the blanket when I saw Maya corner you,” Toby explained. “Figured you might need it.”  
  
“Thanks,” Chase said. “You know, there ought to be a law preventing people from hitting on people who hate them.” He shivered a little in spite of the blanket and pointedly refused to turn and watch Maya make her grand exit. He hoped she stood there and waited for a long time.   
  
“She’s hitting on you?” Toby glanced behind Chase, incredulous.  
  
“I think so. It’s annoying. And it’s pretty creepy. Dating her would be like dating Chloe, except worse, because Chloe at least is going to grow up into an adult someday and Maya is going to stay a spoiled child for the rest of her life.”`  
  
“Hmm,” Toby said, looking back at Chase with a strange expression. “So you don’t like her?”  
  
“Oh, I like her just fine when she’s not pushing me off piers. But do I  like  her? No.” He grimaced. “And honestly, if I married her and every morning when I made her a cup of coffee she told me ‘Thanksies!’ I might have to kill her. And I don’t even know if Hamilton would have any idea what to do with a murderer in the town.”  
  
“Acquit you,” Toby said, flashing him a quick, shy smile. “He’d have to.”  
  
Chase raised an eyebrow. “Why, Toby, that’s the meanest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”  
  
Toby shrugged, his cheeks turning very slightly pink. “Well, she shouldn’t bother you when you’re clearly not interested. And the thanksies thing is pretty annoying.” He paused, staring down at the worn wood of the pier, and then spoke very quickly. “Besides, you’re too attractive for her. You could do better.”  
  
Chase blushed and then wondered why he had done such a thing. “Um... thanks?”  
  
“I’m just saying that you could have anybody in town you wanted,” Toby stammered. “Even, like, Selena.”  
  
“Selena?” Chase tilted his head a little in thought. “No, she’s too flashy. I need somebody more understated than me or else we’d just look garish walking through town together.”  
  
“So,” Toby said, laughing a forced little laugh, “you’re not interested in Julius, then?”  
  
“Julius?” Chase stared at Toby, who deliberately didn’t look at him. “Julius is a dude, Toby.”  
  
“Yeah,” Toby murmured. “Yeah, I know. He just... he’s pretty girly. It was a joke.”  
  
Chase looked at Toby’s flaming cheeks and took pity on him. “Julius is a beautiful, beautiful man,” he said, putting a little glimmer of mischief in his voice and smile.  
  
Toby laughed. “He is that.” He seemed to relax slightly, so Chase smiled again. Toby blushed hard again. “Um...” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “if you’re hungry, I can make us some eel rice...”  
  
Chase raised an eyebrow again. “You cook?”  
  
“Well, not as well as you do,” Toby answered. “But if it’s something that has fish in it, I’m not half bad.”  
  
Chase shifted the blanket and looped his arm with Toby’s. “Show me, then. Feed me some eel.”  
  
Toby whimpered, and even when he got home that night and crawled into bed, Chase still had no idea why.  
  
  
Three  
  
It was the sixth day of summer, and this time when Maya stepped forward to push him off the pier, Chase just laughed and turned around and executed a rather graceful dive off the pier. When he resurfaced, five thoughts came to his head: 

  1. Ha.
  2. Ha.
  3. Ha.
  4. Ha.
  5. Where was Toby? He should have seen that dive. It was perfect.

  
Maya turned and stomped off, and Chase watched her go, treading water which was finally warm for a change. He swam over to the pier and then pulled himself up, reflecting briefly on how much harder it was to climb up without Toby’s help. He sat on the pier for a moment, then pulled off his soggy apron and shirt and stripped down to his shorts, then pushed himself back off the pier and into the water. He smiled and swam around for a few minutes, then floated up on his back and let the sun soak into him.  
  
After several minutes, he heard a whoop and a splash and opened his eyes, expecting to see Paulo or one of the other kids. It was Toby, stripped down to his own shorts and splashing around happily in the water. He grinned at Chase, then splashed him deliberately. Chase shrieked and splashed back, and they got into an epic-scale water battle that left them both exhausted and hurting from all the laughing. After almost an hour, they pulled themselves back up onto the pier and sat there, letting their legs dangle over the edge.   
  
Toby leaned back and turned his face up into the sun. Chase looked over at him and realized that he’d never seen the other man shirtless. He was slim and much more muscular than he’d seemed with a shirt on--probably a byproduct of reeling in huge fish several times a day. Toby opened his eyes and caught Chase staring for just a moment before Chase blushed and looked away.   
  
“So...” Toby said after a moment. “The Firefly Festival is tomorrow. I take it Maya was fishing for an invitation?”  
  
“Yeah,” Chase said. “She didn’t get one.”  
  
“I saw you dive, though,” Toby said. “I was up at Choral Clinic getting some cold medicine for Ozzie and I saw it all happen while I was coming down the stairs.”  
  
“Nice dive, wasn’t it? I was proud of myself.”  
  
“You looked beautiful. Graceful. It was good.” Toby blushed again and looked away, and Chase felt a strange little warmth somewhere in his stomach. He wondered what that meant.  
  
“Are you going to ask Renee to the Festival?” Chase finally said, to break the silence.  
  
Toby sighed. “I don’t know. I like her. And I know she’s expecting an invite. But...”  
  
Chase tilted his head at the hint of sadness in the other man’s voice. “But what?”  
  
“Well...” Toby said, then shifted as if the pier was uncomfortable. “I think she has someone else.”  
  
“Really?” Chase ran through all the other men in the town. “Um... who? Not Gill, surely...”  
  
“No,” Toby said, then cleared his throat. “Um... Kathy.”  
  
Chase was, for what may have been the first time in his life, speechless.  
  
Toby chuckled. “Yeah. I saw them at the hot springs. They weren’t, you know, kissing or anything but they seemed very... happy. Together.”  
  
“Oh,” Chase said at last. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay. My hearts are with someone else anyway.”  
  
“Who?” Chase said, genuinely curious.  
  
Toby looked at him for a long moment, then leaned over and brushed his lips against Chase’s. Chase sat there staring at him, his eyes as wide as moonlight collection stones, and Toby leapt to his feet and ran off toward the Fishery.   
  
Chase sat there staring out at the ocean for a very long time, then stood up and put his mostly-dry clothes back on. He trudged up to Brass Bar and let himself in, then helped Hayden wash glasses while he thought about what to do.   
  
The kiss had been really short and hadn’t really had any effect on Chase except total shock, but now that he was thinking about it, a longer kiss where he actually had the chance to reciprocate sounded... sexy. Kissing another man sounded sexy. No, that wasn’t really true. He guessed the thought of kissing Gill or Julius or Owen sounded sexier than kissing, say, Maya or Candace or Kathy, but picturing himself with his arms around Gill didn’t quite bring back that little tendril of heat in his stomach that thinking about kissing Toby did. And it certainly didn’t give him a little twinge in an area of his body that felt suspiciously like his heart.   
  
Finally, after a long time, Chase put down the last glass and told Hayden he’d be back by the time the kitchen opened, and he left the bar and went down to the Fishery.  
  
Toby was inside helping Ozzie put out the new catch of fish. Chase stood in the doorway and ran a hand through his hair nervously, knocking one of his barrettes out and onto the floor. Toby looked up and turned so red that Chase briefly considered calling Jin for help.  
  
“Hey,” Chase said, just barely loud enough for Toby to hear. “Can you come outside for a second?”  
  
Toby swallowed and nodded, then went over to the sink and washed the fish off of his hands before following Chase outside.  
  
“Um...” Chase said. “You kissed me.”  
  
Toby looked like he might die of the mortification, but he nodded.  
  
“Did you like it?” Chase asked softly.  
  
“I’ve been wanting to kiss you for seasons,” Toby said. “So yeah. I liked it.”  
  
“Okay,” Chase said. “Then... meet me in front of the Big Windmill at 19:00 tomorrow?”  
  
Toby stared at him blankly.  
  
“For the Firefly Festival.”  
  
“Oh.” Toby blushed even more deeply somehow, then nodded. “Yeah. I’d love to.”  
  
Chase smiled, and Toby smiled back, and Bells or no Bells, everything seemed right with the world.


End file.
